Equal Protection Under Law, Oh My!

May 17, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This past week’s major event in California has me completely preoccupied, even though a church convention kept me too busy to give it sufficient thought until now. On Thursday, May 15, the California Supreme Court shook up America again by finding that gay and lesbian people were being denied equal justice by not being allowed to contract civil marriage. The decision can be read here.) The Court declared sections of the California Civil Code unconstitutional, and ordered state officials to redress the wrongs done to us by preparing County Clerks offices to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Unless there is some arcane and unthinkable legal maneuver yet to come, the Court’s decision will take effect in 30 days. “Gay marriage” will be legal beginning on or around June 15, 2008. Equality California has some very helpful Q&A’s already on its web site.

I am especially preoccupied because churches and pastors everywhere in this state must now give gay and lesbian marriages much more serious thought. This new just freedom, which is heartily endorsed by Mayors Gavin Newsom in San Francisco and Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, has the potential to further divide voters and balkanize the Christian church. Although no pastor or church can be required to solemnize anyone’s wedding, you can be sure that the religious right will continue to scream that their faith and their freedom of religion is being damaged by homosexuals and “activist” courts.

(Frankly, if they were deeply troubled on behalf of the “sanctity of marriage” why haven’t they been screaming about the millions of heterosexuals who sleep together without marrying, or the tens of thousands of “sacred” marriages which are destroyed by violence, spouse abuse, alcoholism, or the cheap show-biz weddings of dizzy celebrities which last a few days, to name a few issues?)

When Massachusetts similarly legalized gay marriage (four years ago today, in Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health), Californians didn’t have a dog in that fight. And it looked as if California’s Proposition 22, which passed in 2000 by a 61% margin, would bar California from allowing gay marriage. And even before Thursday’s release of the highest Court’s decision, a well-funded effort was underway to gather signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the California ballot to block same-sex marriage. It remains to be seen if they have submitted enough valid signatures, if the validity can be tabulated in time to make the November 2008 ballot, and if the required majority of voters would actually vote to deprive us of our civil rights.

(In this morning’s Los Angeles Times article about Massachusetts’ experience, Karen Kahn notes that there is not a lot of opposition left in Massachusetts and that almost all of it is religiously-based.)

Although I very much do “have a dog in this fight” I had not invested much of my heart in it for the past several years, ever since the Lockyer v. San Francisco decision nullified our San Francisco marriage license. In February 2004’s “weekend of love” Carl and I went with our best friends to San Francisco, braved the rain overnight under borrowed tarps and umbrellas, paid $75.00 for a license, and exchanged vows, dressed in matching sweatshirts and soaking-wet Levis, and wound up on Dan Rather’s CBS Evening News.

After Lockyer, the license we got in that historic moment is now legally worthless. We still have it among our photos and memorabilia, and it bears the souvenir signature of the Hon. Mayor Gavin Newsom.

But I resisted getting emotionally more involved because I didn’t want to lose again. And after all, my partner and I are protected, and obligated, by California’s extensive “Domestic Partnership” law. We must file our state income tax return jointly, for example, and we couldn’t break our “partnership” without going to a family law court. Domestic Partnership is serious, not play, because it creates rights and requires responsibilities for the couples who enter into it.

This new legality is complex, and many legal questions are yet to be answered in the weeks ahead. What ought not to be left unanswered, however, is the faith question: my faith is that God creates and blesses human relationships of all shapes and sizes, that the Scriptures give us many examples of vanilla and exotic relationships, that the Bible cannot be used truthfully to defend “one man one woman,” and that the Religious Right is not the arbiter of civil rights in a nation which expects and requires separation of church and state. Those whose beliefs are different from mine have no inherent right to deprive me of my legal rights. And if they don’t believe in gay marriage, they can simply not participate, either as a bride, groom or officiant.

My emotional investment is growing again, because I know I will be officiating at more marriages, and because a legal marriage may yet be in my future. In addition, I am drafting plans for “A Wedding Day: The Seminar” for pastors and church leaders, to be scheduled later this year in Los Angeles.

Next month’s Christopher Street West festival will likely be bubbling with marital bliss. I’ll be there again this year, at our Big Fat Gay Church Wedding booth. Last year we met and photographed 350 couples in wedding gowns and tuxedos!

In the meantime, everyone of us needs to get ready for a real dog fight to protect this new constitutional right form the Religious Reich. One avenue is to volunteer and donate to Equality for All.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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